the only thing that matters
by singsongsung
Summary: NS; alternate 3x06 ending.


**A/N: **Here you go, Juliette. :P

**the only things that matters**

* * *

_why don't you step a little closer?_

_and I'll show you how to make your heart beat _

_

* * *

_

She stumbles into his apartment – sometime over the past month, he dropped a key into her hand and there haven't been boundaries since then; _always_, they fall into it so easily it hurts – a blur of blonde hair and kicked off shoes and deep blues, and it makes his heart ache, not just for the tears staining her cheeks but because he watches her in awe for a moment, forcing himself to blink out of it, and wonders if he will ever, _ever_ catch up with this girl.

Her cheeks are flames, skin scarred red by some sort of desperate sadness, and the fire sparks through her eyes; he doesn't know if he's ever seen her this angrily disheartened, except maybe when she said her goodbyes the summer before Lily dragged her to Kuwait.

_He left_, she says, voice thick, trying so hard to be unbreakable and failing. _He left, are you happy now?_

Taking a moment, he swallows hard, and then he's shaking his head, reaching toward her cautiously.

He realizes then that it was stupid of him not to pick her from the start, not to put her before his family. He sees, in those heartbroken eyes and trembling lips, all he's pulled away from her tonight: her certainty as a woman with a mind for business, her total independence, the new home she'd built for herself, and the person she'd centered it all around – all that was currently meaningful, all that justified what she'd done and what she wanted – he'd ripped it away until she had no choice but to come right back to him: he who had ruined it all.

He did it unwillingly, of course; they break each other like they once did those china bunny rabbits she had sitting on her nightstand during a pillow fight, innocent slow-motion falls that appear dreamlike until everything shatters on the floor, and somehow they always forget to pick up the pieces until one day, they're all gone, swept under the bed.

Maybe he wanted her to ache, just for a second, like he does sometimes. Like that afternoon on a lunch date with Blair and Chuck and Bree, Serena's absence palpable to him. Or that night Carter was out of town and Nate came home to find Serena curled up on his couch in PJs with the movie channel on, and the sting he'd felt when he threw a smile in her direction at a scene he knew she loved and saw her smiling down at a text message on her phone. He wanted her throat to tighten the way his had later that same night when she's been asleep with her feet in his lap and he'd noticed someone else's boxers slung around her hips.

Before he might have said that he was jealous of all she'd done that he hadn't, all the ways her life had progressed admirably, but in truth he was jealous of all she'd done without him, all the ways she'd become the perfect girlfriend that wasn't his.

He reaches out with his hand to cup her elbow, slides his hand quickly down her arm until their fingers are securely linked, and tugs her toward him. She crumples into his chest, tears soaking his unbuttoned shirt, clinging tight. Her crying sounds like it has since she was about three years old and it tears brutally at something within him.

Serena smells like that new perfume she's started wearing and laundry done with that French detergent Blair always bought and had the maid use and another man's cologne, but as he tucks his head into her neck and holds her tight, he catches sandalwood beneath it all, that familiar signature scent of hers, and the faintest hint of the coconut shampoo he bought her for Christmas when they were twelve that she's been using ever since.

_No, _he says earnestly into her soft blonde hair as she takes a shuddering breath. He can feel the rapid beat of her heart, loss thumping hard in her chest and coursing through her entire body. _No, I'm not happy_.

She makes a sound from where her face is buried against his shoulder, something caught between a sob and sigh. _Good_, she says firmly in a strangled voice, making it clear that she is still hurting and that it is his fault.

_I'm sorry_, he murmurs, gulping. _I really am, S._

He feels her lips curve up the slightest bit against his skin as she exhales and her sobs fade away, the closest thing he'll get to forgiveness for the moment.

He'll keep saying sorry, he knows, for as long as it takes for her to believe him, for as long as it takes for him to make this right for them both. It might be hours, or days, or weeks.

But for now he considers it progress just to have her breathing against his skin, wrapped up in his arms, to feel her heartbeat slowing and settling in a gentle cadence, one that feels a lot more like contentment.


End file.
